I have nothing to add to the discussion, except to congratulate the commenters on the quality of the responses (except for the person who insists on calling people “gentlemen”; sheesh. Do I get to read the comments even though I am a girl? Or will you get girl cooties? Or is it just no fun unless you can pretend commenting on a blog in 2010 is like lecturing at Cambridge in 1900? I’m not that grouchy about inclusive language when you can’t avoid it or when being inclusive makes the prose ungainly or cluttered, but why make a point of being exclusionary in a forum where you don’t have to be?)
Pay particular attention to the discussion of pricing changeover technologies.
But also keep in mind that oil gets used for a lot of economic production that doesn’t involve personal automobiles.